Partners

After last week’s Real Housewives of Orange County thunderdome, this week’s episode was actually rather docile. There was no yelling, no screaming, only a little bit of crying. Still, though, it was at least moderately entertaining. Unlike the Atlanta housewives, the Orange County women have found a way to make their utter despicableness and ongoing web of petty feuds watchable. At least for masochists like me.

That being said, I’m not exactly sure what to say about this episode in the way of introduction. Real Housewives continued apace – Vicki was detestable, Heather was a snob, Tamra had many thoughts about her boobs. Gretchen vowed to go on a diet. Slade looked at her and saw dollar signs. There was housewifery everywhere.

We started this episode like we ended the last one – in a plastic surgeon’s office. This time it was Tamra’s doctor, and she was visiting to discuss having her implants removed. If you remember, Tamra got her implants pumped up a few years ago at the urging of her scuzzy ex-husband, and now she’s sick of them. Tamra is quite short and has lost a bit of weight, so her ginormous, obviously fake knockers do make her look a little like a day-shift stripper. Good for her for wanting to look more like her real self.

Things then jumped to Alexis’ doctor’s office, where she had been under anesthesia since last week, waiting for us to come back and watch her nose job. The doctor went to great lengths to show us bits of bone and giant gobs of blood-covered snot that he took out of Alexis’ face, both of which I could have lived my entire life without seeing. When I got my tonsils removed (at 24 – I was definitely the tallest patient in that waiting room), I specifically told the doctor before hand that I didn’t want to see or hear about anything he pulled out of me after I woke up. I stand by that decision.

At yet another doctor’s office, Vicki was in a parking lot, sobbing. Preliminary results from Brianna’s surgery had come back and the doctor didn’t think things looked good, which must be hard to hear for even a dense, narcissistic jerk like Vicki. After all, if she loses her daughter, she loses part of her identity, and what will she do then? She’ll have one less life accomplishment to lord over people in arguments. Why doesn’t anyone think of Vicki? Anyway, the only reason I’m being so glib is because Brianna is still alive and well, which means that either the preliminary results were wrong or any cancer that the doctors found was dealt with successfully. Also, because Vicki is terrible, a fact on which I’m pretty much certain that Brianna agrees.

We finally visited a housewife who wasn’t at the doctor, which was Heather, who was at home. In her endless quest to piss people off, she whined that being a stay-at-home mom is so much harder than working, and I can’t help but wish that Heather could have a Freaky Friday with some mom of four who’s single and working at Subway to feed her kids. I wonder how easy life is when you’re a Sandwich Artist with mouths to feed, eh Heather? Bet it’s way easier than dishing up perfectly cooked, home-delivered food in a custom-built mansion while you tell the nannies to make sure they hide just out of the camera shot. Can you feel my eyes rolling? Because they rolled.

They kept rolling straight into our next scene, which involved Gretchen telling us that she wants to follow in the footsteps of Pink and Christina Aguilera. I don’t even have the time to properly address the kind of delusion that requires on Gretchen’s part, so let’s move along. Robin Antin showed up with a bunch of dancers in tow to show Gretchen and Slade some of what the Pussycat Dolls do, as if there’s anyone on the country who’s not familiar with them at this point, and I’m pretty sure I went to high school with the redheaded dancer on the left. (No, seriously.) Gretchen seemed surprised that the dancers were incredibly hot and very skilled at their trade, and she started planning a diet right then and there. Of course, that doesn’t make any sense – Gretchen doesn’t need to lose weight, she needs to build muscle. Don’t tell that to women like Gretchen, though, because in her mind, a salad is the solution to everything.

Back with Vicki, Brianna had made her way to her apartment post-surgery, but they were still waiting for biopsy results. It was telling that Brianna wanted to recover at her own apartment instead of Vicki’s house, and watching Vicki and the camera crew hover over her while she was clearly feeling awful and trying to take a nap perfectly illustrated what it was telling us. Being recently knocked out and cut open is not the time that you want to answer a bunch of rapid-fire questions for a very high-strung woman, even if she means well. If Vicki had wanted to shield Brianna’s recovery from the show, she could have done it and we could have followed up later when the biopsy results were known. Instead, Vicki sold her sick daughter out for camera time. Classy move.

At Alexis’ house, she was also trying to sleep while Jim fed her some “homemade” (yeah right) soup for the camera and then left her to a home care nurse that they had hired to watch over her while he…well, while he does Earth Jesus things like buying track suits and ignoring his children. Other than that, Jim doesn’t actually have a job, as far as I know. He certainly can’t deign to care for his sick wife, though, because that’s woman’s work, so he hired a woman to do it.

Elsewhere, Heather, Vicki and Tamra were taking a helicopter ride to LA with a few of Heather’s future business partners to chat about the restaurant business and…go to a restaurant. I’m not entirely clear on why they had to go to LA to do that, but maybe the women in Orange County don’t consume enough food to support actual restaurants. Most of the helicopter ride consisted of Heather’s clueless friends saying dumb, entitled things while Vicki tried to talk sense and Tamra tried to restrain herself from slapping everyone. It’s scenes like that one, where relatively unprivileged Tamra plays the Greek chorus and says what we’re all actually thinking in the one-on-one interviews, that I really, truly love her.

Eventually the helicopter landed and the women arrived at Heather’s friend’s restaurant, at which point the restaurant owner warned them about some of the challenges of restaurant ownership and they all ignored it. As Vicki said, these women don’t want to run a business, they want to build a clubhouse for themselves and spend a bunch of their husbands’ money doing it. If I’m admitting that Vicki’s right about anything, you know that means she’s really, truly, indisputably right. Even Heather admitted that she didn’t really care if the entire venture failed, which is a clip of video that I hope any prospective investors in the project see before giving her any checks.

After a quick checkup with Alexis (not dead of nosejob complications, in case you were wondering), the ladies in LA were seated for lunch and talked more about the restaurant business. Vicki was a tad negative about the whole thing, which miffed Heather because how dare anyone share concerns about the incredibly risky business venture she wants to launch with five other people and a bunch of her husband’s money? Never mind that Heather had invited Vicki along for her business perspective; as soon as she started saying things that weren’t exactly what she wanted to hear, Heather was pissed.

Meanwhile, Tamra marveled at the fact that Heather and all her friends seemed to get along and support each other instead of fighting and gossiping and scheming like the ladies on the show. Well, duh. I bet that if you wave a TV show in front of Heather and her friends and promise them fame if they make for entertaining television, they’d fall all over themselves trying to sell each other out. Bravo has proven that time and again, and Tamra knows very well that if they don’t make drama they get kicked off the show, so I’m not sure why she’s so baffled.

And then, Gretchen lit her hair on fire. Something happened after that, but I don’t remember what it was, which means it wasn’t particularly important or entertaining, and it seems appropriate to end then recap on the tableau of Gretchen, extensions ablaze, silently hoping that her nasty acrylic sweater doesn’t incinerate on contact. Or maybe acrylic melts? I’m not sure. Either way, Gretchen better thank the baby Jesus that some doctor didn’t have to separate her sweater from her skin. Hopefully she’ll take it as a sign to buy some natural fabrics at some point.